24 May 2022 - Anthony Albanese wins Australian elections
Australia election: conservative government voted out after nearly a decade
Vincent Visontay (The Guardian, 21/05/2022)
Australia’s rightwing Coalition government has lost power after nearly a decade in office, with Saturday’s election showing a sharp shift to progressive parties that will result in a Labor government under Anthony Albanese – though he may need the support of climate-focused independents or the Greens.
The Liberal party leader, Scott Morrison, conceded defeat just before 11pm AEST on Saturday, and announced he would step down as leader of his party.
“We’ve seen in our own politics a great deal of disruption as the people have voted today with major parties having one of the lowest primary votes we’ve ever seen,” Morrison told supporters at his election night reception in Sydney.
Australian voters have elected their government. Now the Labor Party has to make them believe they were right
Shaun Carney (The Conversation, 23/05/2022)
Elections are a test – the ultimate test, really – of those who serve as parliamentarians and those who aspire to serve. Scott Morrison asserted quite absurdly early in the 2022 campaign that the election was not a popularity contest. Clearly, the opposite is true. An election involving every eligible voter is by definition a popularity contest.
It was not hard to see why Morrison was trying to argue that day was night. With the early halo effect of the pandemic that boosted his popularity towards the stratosphere a distant memory, he was trying to overcome his rising levels of unpopularity. Ultimately, in the final days of the campaign, with his initial Lewis Carroll-esque stylings having failed to change the Liberals’ tracking polling, he pledged to become a different person.
The most important line in Albanese’s victory speech signalled the end of an era
Sean Kelly (Sydney Morning Herald, 23/05/2022)
It took a while to notice: how strange it was, suddenly, to be listening to a different type of language. On screen, Anthony Albanese was telling the country what he believed mattered, in words only a Labor leader was likely to choose. “No one left behind because we should always look after the disadvantaged and the vulnerable,” he said in his victory speech. Liberal language was gone: there was no dividing the country into lifters and leaners, into quiet Australians and those who won’t behave, into those who gave a go and those who apparently deserved whatever misfortune came their way.
Four questions for our new PM that will define Australia’s future
Sally-Anne Williams (Financial Review, 23/05/2022)
With the election done and dusted Australia’s new prime minister needs a plan for our future economic prosperity and geopolitical leadership, and it hangs on our ability to establish sovereign capabilities in future-critical industries.
Cultivating the type of economy in which homegrown future-critical deep tech companies flourish requires business, investment and community to align on a grand vision.